


The Mountain

by PitoyaPTx



Series: Stories From Clan Meso'a [2]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Clan Meso'a, Gen, Mandalorian, Mandalorian Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-19 00:39:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19345990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PitoyaPTx/pseuds/PitoyaPTx
Summary: You'll grow grey before the mountain speaks ~Meso'a saying





	The Mountain

**Author's Note:**

> Accompanies Episodes 21-24 of the Clan Meso'a series

When do you stop fearing the mountain? When the wind dies down and the trees grow still? When the skies grow bright on a new dawn?   
We dug the trenches to the exact measurement. Greta told us, “One day the mountain will speak again.” We believed her. She was so kind, so wise. Her words were good to us, good to the mountain. She grew grey and the mountain did not speak.   
We dug for years on both coasts and in the central valleys. We dug trenches, pathways for the words of the mountain should she speak again. Her lovers dotting the range wait for her, they wait for her to speak. We must be ready.   
When my son finished the trench, he came to me.   
“Buir, will the mountain speak?”   
I looked him in the eye and said, “I grow grey in the shadow of the mountain, and so will you.”  
I meant it as a comfort to him, to his children. I meant for them to grow grey with me.  
When I met my grandson, when I met my granddaughter, I told them this too.  
“I grow grey in the shadow of the mountain, and so, ade, will you.”  
They say she mutters in her sleep, that she watches us from her heights, that she feels us in her roots. They say she that when times are bad, she wishes to speak, to comfort us, to wrap us in her warmth. They say she is angered by our trenches, that she sends her groundquakes to break us. She broke our wall one day. She scared us. We rushed to fix the wall, to save us from her words..her harsh words for she is never pleased anymore.   
She watches us now. I know she wants to speak for my grandson, my dear grandson, has angered her. I have seen him, his choxul is fading. She knows this, she wishes to speak to him. But his sister, my dearest granddaughter, her choxul is strong. Her words are clear. The mountain hears her and is pleased. She speaks like Greta. She speaks with respect for the mountain. She has no words for my granddaughter. I am pleased with her too. I have no words for her.  
Rahast you stole him from me! You wish to wake the mountain. You test me. Father Kad, you allowed this. You took my granddaughter from me. I know this, I know you loved her. But they were buried at her roots and now the mountain tastes blood! She will fall! She will speak! I know she will...I know she will.   
The winds have died down, the trees are still. The sun shines bright today. I am grey. I look at my son. He is grey too. The mountain, her lovers, they do not speak. And I think neither will I.”   
~Baba Norivan, be aliit Xalaraac 

“Why save this?” the young scribe asked, delicately placing the holodisk back into its slot on the shelf.   
“Mmm,” Axa hummed, eyes still closed and brows relaxed in the light beaming down on her from the high windows.   
The archives were humid enough that neither wore their pectoral plates. The Rodian sat back down on her pillow and crossed her legs beneath her skirt. She watched her teacher anxiously, fidgeting with the beaded cord of her pike resting across her lap. Dust swirled the room as a blast of icy, mountain air barged in and spun downward, rustling her headband. She quickly took hold of it and re-tied it, boredom replacing the eagerness of the morning; her teacher, however, was unaffected as always.   
“Glory,” Axa cracked one eye.  
“Hm?”  
“Your name means ‘Glory’.”  
Harven flushed, “That’s what they tell me.”  
Axa hummed again, then opened both of her soft hazel eyes. The high tower where she taught her protege was always in between humid and dreadfully windy. At the moment it was both, the wind offering a slight reprieve from the oppressive heat of midsummer. Harven was used to this, but knew it was getting harder and harder for the older woman to make the trip up the mountain. Speaking of which:  
“You wanted to teach me about the mountain in literature, right?” said Harven, “Well, I was thinking, did you save it because there are people still afraid of the volcanoes?”  
Axa grinned slightly, “And you’re not?”  
Harven shook her head, “No, no I am. My family lives along the coast. We’d get swept away if it weren’t for the trenches!”  
“Mm, tell me how are the volcanoes formed?”   
“Oh!” Harven pulled out a holodisc from her canvas purse and set it on the ground. She keyed up a topographical map of the planet, then zoomed in on the northern portion of the western continent, “The island in the north is just large enough that its plate is getting stuck underneath the western continent’s. Over time, the northern plate began to slide further and further below the western plate, which created a trench along the northern coast right here,” she traced a line along the ocean just north of the mountain range, “The subduction of the ocean plates caused the mountains to form, the volcanic ones specifically due to disturbances in the continental crust.”  
She beamed across the holoimage, hands clasped dutifully in her lap.   
“Very good,” Axa smiled warmly, waving her hand over the holodisc and shutting it off, “So why are there mountains in our literature?”  
“They dominate the skyline, produce tremors, and could erupt someday if we don’t take care of the environment.”  
“And we do that by?”  
“Not drilling into the mountains, not building structures into the mountains we’ve identified as unsuitable to hold up complex structures, by maintaining the eastern and western lava-trenches, and by respecting Father Kad,” she took a deep breath, “But this is a lifetime of maintenance, therefore our descendents will be talking and writing about this so long as the winds blow and the days are bright.”   
“Good, good,” said the old woman, pulling her fur lined shawl up over her shoulders, “So, I ask again, why are they in our literature?”  
Harven’s shoulders drooped and her tendrils rustled with annoyance. She’d just answered the question.   
“Vin’baba-”  
“We like to say that the world around us is as much a teacher as the people who live in it,” Axa raised her hands and gestured around them, “We learn to hunt, to fish, to sew, to make armor, to build ships and guns for ourselves and our ships, and yet we fear the mountain? Our brethren fight one another, dig quarries on the moons, and yet they fear the mountain? What do we have to fear now that we have all of this...wonderful technology?”  
Harven picked at the hem of her skirt, idly rubbing her tongue against the back of her teeth, “Mmm...is it because the mountain is a metaphor for worry about things we can’t control?”  
Axa reached across the gap and gently cupped Harven’s face, “Exactly.”  
If Harven could frown as deeply as she wanted to she would have.   
“Sounds much too straightforward, no?” Axa chuckled.   
Harven nodded.   
“Hmm...well I’m sure you’ve heard many people wax poetic about the mountain and her secrets, but never forget that behind many miracles, there is a truth to be discovered,” She stood, her dress shedding a layer of dust the wind disturbed down from the high shelves, “Belief in myths, the myths that form the baseline of our culture, is fine so long as you don’t forget to ask questions. Why fear a thing if you have the chance to understand it?”  
“Are you saying,” Harven quickly got up and followed her tutor, “That Baba Norivan didn’t understand volcanoes?”  
“Mm..that is possible, but her people lived in the shadow of a rather vocal volcano,” Axa pointed out, “I wouldn’t be surprised if many still write poems about her.”   
“Is that so bad?”  
Axa shook her head, her earrings like wind chimes in the gusts freely dancing around the room now that the door was open. She stepped through out onto the hilltop courtyard where several of her older students were sewing and chatting with one another.   
“No, it isn’t, as it is a good thing to remember.”  
“The poems?” Harven asked, shielding her eyes from the blazing sun.   
Axa chuckled warmly and patted her shoulder, “No, kex’ika, remember not to worry.” 

Harven spent a long time trying to reconcile not worrying with how bleak mountain poetry was. Like the oceans who give and take, so too does the mountain provide a fickle companion to her people. Baba Norivan’s poem in particular was troubling. After a while, she began to keep a copy with her. Her students always inquired about it, but she could never give them a good answer. Maybe she hadn’t come up with one, or maybe it just seemed like a good thing to do. Though Harven grew as grey as a Rodian is capable of, she kept the disc by her side as a reminder. It didn’t warn her about worrying or about environmental disasters, but as she aged she realized it was comforting to know that no matter how different her people may be, they all shared the same concerns and fears. Had her students not intervened, the disc would have been returned to the tower as a loanable copy. Instead, it was burned with her when she reached na’til’ka.   
“Do not worry,” she’d said during one of her last lessons, “Because there will always be others who feel the way you do.”


End file.
